


Grace

by anamia



Series: The daemon!jolras AU [6]
Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Gen, Past Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-13
Updated: 2013-06-13
Packaged: 2017-12-14 21:26:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/841569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anamia/pseuds/anamia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before leaving for the barricade, Combeferre left Musichetta with a task to accomplish should they fall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grace

**Author's Note:**

> This is not quite set in the daemon!jolras 'verse proper, but it's close enough that I'm putting it in here anyway.

They sneak into Combeferre’s apartment shortly before sunrise, Dante curled around Musichetta’s throat like a living scarf. He’s trembling and her eyes are red; they haven’t slept in the two days since the failed uprising and she’s barely stopped crying. She’s not crying now, but it’s a near thing, and her hands shake violently as she inserts the lock pick where a key should go. It takes several minutes for the lock to give way, several minutes of her hands shaking and Dante keeping a lookout and both of them trying so hard not to remember why they learned to pick locks in the first place that they can do nothing else.

The door opens at last and she slips into the main room. Dante whimpers quietly and hides his face in her coat, his entire body trembling. She wishes she could do the same. The main room is meticulously neat and organized, shelves crammed full of books and desk piled high with papers. The fireplace has been swept clean of ashes and Musichetta knows without looking that those who come later to clean it out will find no perishable goods in any of the cabinets. Her knees threaten to give way and she sinks into one of the chairs, one of _his_ chairs, and buries her face in her hands, breath coming unevenly. Dante uncurls just enough to lick her cheek, pressing his body against her as a reminder to them both that they’re not alone, not entirely. She picks him up and presses him to her chest, taking deep breaths to stave off more tears. Tears can happen later. They have a job to do here and time is of the essence.

“Where do you think he left it?” she asks when she can trust her voice again.

“In the bedroom,” Dante says, and he doesn’t sound any happier about that than she is. “Or one of the bookshelves.”

She takes a steadying breath and stands, heavy black skirts falling down to her feet with a soft rustle. The growing light outside means that she doesn’t have to use one of his candles, and she takes a moment to appreciate small mercies. With the world in its current state even the smallest of mercies seems like a Godsend. Without discussing it, she and Dante make their way to the bookshelf, eyes running over the myriad of carefully bound books. Combeferre collected books like Courfeyrac collected friends – indiscriminate about subject matter but with an eye for quality. Some look more used than others, but Musichetta knows that every single book in these rooms has been read, likely multiple times, poured over by sunlight and candle flame with a dedication and an intensity that would have looked almost comical on someone else but which Combeferre seemed to have been born for. She clenches a fist and shakes her head, forcing away any thoughts but the task at hand. With hands that shake only a little bit she reaches up and removed the first books from their places.

It takes nearly an hour to clear the first few shelves. Musichetta stacks the books carefully, making neat piles on the floor that Dante nudges into place and straightens with his small hands. His fur has lost its luster and he moves with a terrible lethargy. Musichetta knows she isn’t in much better condition, but they keep going, running hand and paw over empty shelves in search of a hidden compartment or unusually heavy book, minds fixed on the heavy gold instrument that he cared for so lovingly. The task soothes their mind a little, its repetitive nature lulling them into an entirely unwarranted state of calm.

They don’t find the alethiometer. In the back of their minds they always knew they wouldn’t, knew he wouldn’t leave it so out in the open, knew he wouldn’t desecrate his bookshelves with hidden openings or false books.

It’s Dante who, as they start putting books back on shelves and running gentle fingers over gilded spines, points out that they found books about everything except the alethiometer itself. Musichetta knows he had them; she saw them often enough and heard stories about how he worked to acquire them all, buying from disreputable sources and lying to people he respected in order to acquire the knowledge he required.

“We could try the kitchen,” Dante offers, but he knows as well as she that they won’t be there either. She wants to take the suggestion anyway, wants to put off the inevitable as long as possible, wants to pretend, just for a moment, that she doesn’t have to step into the bedroom of a dead man.

With a sigh she shakes her head. “We don’t have time,” she says wearily. “His family might come by at any moment.”

They both flinch at the word family and she braces herself against the wall as a wave of raw agony swamps them both, leaving them trembling and breathless with vision distorted by unshed tears and Dante’s claws digging into her shoulders through her heavy dress, stifling in the June heat. After nearly a minute they stand up again, her back rigid and his claws still gripping her tightly. Neither mention the reason for their sudden distress; family is a touchier subject than ever these days.

Combeferre left his bedroom door unlocked. The key, Musichetta knows, will be lying neatly on the desk, or maybe in one of the top drawers, clearly marked so that the landlady or next tenant will have no trouble locating it. The bedroom, like the main room, is immaculate. Here too all the books are organized, the drawers are closed, the bed is made. She runs a finger along the top of his dresser and it comes out nearly clean; he dusted.

She holds Dante tightly again, standing next to the dresser and looking around at the bedroom with eyes still red and puffy from weeping. He is making soft mewling sounds and trying to burrow into her dress. Like the rest of the rooms this bedroom makes it clear that, more than any of the others, Combeferre _knew_. Always considerate, he had spent his last hours in these rooms making things easy for those who would come for his things, tidying and organizing and saying goodbye.

“Under the bed,” Dante whispers, voice cracking. Musichetta nods and forces herself to step further into the room, feet clicking far too loudly on clean-swept floorboards. It’s a relief to step onto soft rugs; bringing noise into this place seems the height of disrespect. She drops to her knees and Dante peels himself from her arms, wanting to leave as little as she wants him to go but knowing that he must. He slides in under the bed, paws making almost no noise. She can almost see what he does and lets her awareness flow into her dæmon more completely. Together they nose the floorboards under Combeferre’s bed, seeking out the hidden space beneath them that may or may not actually exist.

They find nothing, and after a few minutes Dante slips back out and climbs into her arms once more, fur ruffled by his passage beneath the bedclothes. She smoothes it back down, still kneeling on the rug, at a loss for where else to look.

“Maybe he left instructions somewhere?” Dante asks after a while.

“Why would he do that?” she asks, but she stands anyway, shaking her skirts until they hang properly again. She swallows hard, trying to force the hard lump in her throat to dissipate some. Dante has no answer for her, as she knew he wouldn’t.

They check the bookshelf just to be thorough, hands running over books they know all too well, books Combeferre brought with him to meetings and lent out to their friends and poured over looking for references. Dante pulls out a slightly battered medical textbook that’s sticking out farther than the others and finds it identical to one of Joly’s still sitting on Musichetta’s floor. The two of them have to sit down before they lose their balance. Musichetta knows if she were to open this copy she would find notes in all the margins, taken in Combeferre’s neat writing and Joly’s lazier script, with arrows draw to relevant passages and one memorable section crossed out entirely. They shared their books, studying from whichever copy happened to be closer and copying notes over at regular intervals. A stray piece of paper sticks up ever so slightly, possibly a draft of the biting letter Combeferre drafted to the author with regard to his chapter on the health of women.

She does not open the book. Dante pushes it away with jerky movements. He starts to maneuver it under the bed to hide it entirely but she shakes her head and takes a steadying breath. Again, she fixes her mind on the task at hand; there will be time to cry more once they have found Combeferre’s alethiometer. The knowledge that he personally gave her this task hurts more than it helps, but she thinks about it anyway, remembering his intense gaze and firm voice and utter trust. To betray the trust of the dead is worse than to betray that of the living and he deserves far better. She rises.

“Let’s look at the desk,” she says, voice rendered thick by the lump still lodged firmly in her throat. Dante clambers up her skirts and drapes himself around her neck once more and with quiet steps they leave the room.

The sun has risen fully by now, though clock has wound down and she has no idea of the time. She has spent too long here though; if she is caught no one will hesitate to charge her with theft and trespassing, and her connection to the revolutionaries is hardly secret. They will not be lenient. She shivers and begins opening the desk drawers, testing for false bottoms and hidden compartments. The drawers contain letters and pamphlets essays but nothing like what she needs. She suppresses growing anger with difficulty, reminding herself that leaving a note with clear instructions would have been too dangerous for them both. Still, _something_ would have been helpful, and she’s faintly surprised beneath her anger that he didn’t even point her in the right direction.

“Maybe one of the letters?” Dante murmurs, and she nods. It feels dirty to go through his private correspondence, but he must have known that someone would. Most are addressed to him and those she sets aside unread, knowing there might be something in them and willing to take that chance. Looking through the handful of unsent letters written by Combeferre himself she feels an almost hysterical laugh bubble up inside her. They are not addressed, though there is space at the top for names and salutations, and they all speak on the same theme: the future. She manages to get through half of one that paints a vision of universal education with breathtaking eloquence before she can’t see for the tears in her eyes and has to set it down or ruin the ink. Dante reaches up and wipes her eyes, fur soft against her skin.

“He never stopped believing,” he whispers.

“Of course not,” she agrees roughly. “None of them did.” She smoothes out the letter, going to put it back in the drawer, then abruptly changes her mind and sweeps the entire small stack into her pocket. His last words deserve to be shared with the world, not just found by his aristocratic family and burned on principle without even being read.

“Maybe it’s not here after all?” she says.

“He said it would be,” Dante reminds her. “He’d keep his word.”

“Perhaps he was distracted.” Even as she speaks she knows it’s not that. Combeferre was meticulous in all he did and he would not choose something this important to indulge in sloppiness or distraction.

“He wouldn’t do that,” Dante says echoing her thoughts.

“Then what do you suggest?” she asks, heartache and worry and anger making her sharper than necessary. He feels the same that she does and licks her cheek before responding.

“There must be something here, something we’ve missed, a subtle sign, _something_.” He kneads his claws into her dress as they both try to think, mentally retracing their steps through the rooms.

Dante stiffens on her shoulders a moment later, then clambers down her body to land silently on the floor. “Stay here,” he says, scampering off towards the bedroom. She follows despite his words; she has lost too much to let her dæmon out of her sight even for a moment. They enter the bedroom again, now slightly less tidy than it used to be because of the books scattered across the floor. Musichetta bends to put them away again as Dante goes directly to the medical book. She winces.

“Must you?” she asks, but he doesn’t reply. When she turns to ask him again she sees that he has his teeth clamped around the paper sticking out of the textbook and is trying to pull it out without ripping through it. She kneels down and takes it from him, working it out of the book herself.

It’s not a letter to the author at all. Instead the paper is nearly blank, with just a sentence written towards the center. It’s unsigned, but she knows his penmanship. _Joly’s copy has our notes_ reads the paper. With a hand that shakes almost violently she flips open the cover, finding not thin pages covered in ink but a hole in which nestles a heavy golden instrument.

“I thought it felt too heavy,” Dante murmurs, peering at the alethiometer with big eyes.

“Where are the books that go with it?” she asks, making no move to pick it up.

“On the bottom shelf.”

She turns to look at the shelf indicated and sees nearly twenty books lined up neatly, spines blank.

“You’re certain?”

He nods.

“We can’t take them with us. They’d notice, even if we could carry them.”

“You can carry that.” He points with his nose to the alethiometer and she swallows hard.

“Without the books it’s useless.”

“There are other books. Chetta, we have to go.”

It’s her turn to nod and she forces herself to reach for the alethiometer. The metal is cold in her hands and it feels impossibly awkward to handle, a violation of privacy worse even than reading his letters. But she has no choice, so she slips it carefully into her other pocket as Dante noses the cover of the book shut and begins to drag it back to the shelf. She picks it up and finishes the job, sliding it back into place as though it had never been disturbed.

They close the bedroom door when they leave and make sure the desk looks untouched, then slip out the front door and walk lightly down the stairs, turning into an alley and wandering the streets for a while, doubling back several times and passing through as many puddles as they can find just in case someone saw them leave and got suspicious. They don’t make it back to their own rooms for nearly an hour and a half, and by that time they’re wet and tired and more heartsick than ever. Musichetta takes the alethiometer and the letters from her pockets and shuts them in her own desk, unable even to look at them properly. Without even removing her shoes she collapses onto her bed, Dante pressed tightly against her breast, and finally cries again, face buried in a pillow as Dante keens quietly into the hollow of her neck. They have cried like this before, have spent most of the past two days crying like this, but it brings no release, nothing but sharp stabs of unbearable agony to pierce the fog of omnipresent pain. It seems like it has been much longer than two days, seems like they have always been in pain, feels like there has never been anything good in their lives. She knows with dull certainty that there never will be again, that her happiness died with her boys on the barricade, flowing from her in time with the red blood flowing from their veins into the gutters. She sobs helplessly and it doesn’t make anything better at all.

Hours later they are still in the same position, tears exhausted for the moment, trembling in exhaustion. They should eat something, but they have little money and less appetite and so they stay where they are, Musichetta’s head throbbing in time with Dante’s heartbeat.

“We should look at it.” Dante sounds drained and his fur is duller than ever. He does not raise his head from its place on Musichetta’s shoulder.

“What for?” she wants to know. “We can’t read it.”

“He might have left something on it for us,” Dante says. He doesn’t believe that, not anymore than she does, but he looks up at her with pleading eyes and she inclines her head.

“Maybe,” she agrees, getting up and bracing herself against the nearest wall. Her head swims as she takes a step and she gulps in air to keep from fainting. The alethiometer is where she left it, sitting atop the slightly crumpled letters, face up. She picks it up in both hands and goes back to her bed, dropping down to a seat and laying the instrument in her lap, staring at it with dull resentment. She feels her anger returning, a faint shadow only due to her exhaustion but still noticeable.

“What good _is_ it?” she asks. “It didn’t save them.”

It’s the closest she’s come to admitting out loud what happened and the words drop from her lips like stones.

“They knew it was coming,” Dante says after a minute, staring fixedly at the surface of the alethiometer.

“Then why did they go?” she asks, voice rising a little. “Why did they do it?” ‘Why did they leave us behind?’ she wants to ask, but her voice fails her.

“They had to,” Dante says, sounding miserable. “We knew that, just like they did.”

“But _why_?” she asks again. “It didn’t do anyone any good, not them, not us, not Paris.” She glares down at the alethiometer. “Couldn’t it have told them that, at least?”

Dante has no answers for her and he curls into her lap instead, trying to offer comfort he cannot give, not with his heart as broken as hers. The longest needle of the alethiometer continues on its path around the circle, passing silently over the carefully painted symbols. She’s just weary enough that the pattern lulls her into a half sleep, eyes glazing over as she watches. The scowl does not leave her face.

Later neither she nor Dante will be able to say exactly what happened. One minute they’re looking down almost dazedly at the alethiometer, the next they’re fully awake and fixing their attention on it completely. Something in their mind wakes, shifts, gives way to a state they have never before experienced. The movement of the long needle seems more purposeful now as it travels across the symbols.

It pauses on the anchor and then the baby, swinging back and forth between the two. Musichetta blinks, sensing something just at the edge of her awareness. She tries to reach for it but she’s still tired and half in a trance and she misses. It creeps towards her anyway, a flash of understanding just out of her reach. A moment later it bursts onto her, ice cold clarity that shocks her system and makes her gasp. She looks back down at the alethiometer with wide eyes, seeing how the needle pauses on the anchor for hope and the baby for the future and knowing that it is telling her not to give up.

And then the clarity is gone and the needle has gone back to its wandering trajectory. She raises her eyes to stare at Dante, who looks as stunned as she does. Even as she looks at him she feels her exhaustion return full force, pulling her down into slumber with a tug she has no chance of fighting. She slumps down, Dante creeping over to curl up against her, falling into a deep and dreamless sleep. When she wakes she feels more rested than she has since the night her world collapsed and she dares to think that maybe, just maybe, things might improve in time. The alethiometer sits next to her, unreadable and mysterious, and she stops fiddling with it after only a few minutes. She knows instinctively that the understanding of the night before was a single event, a moment of grace granted to her in her darkest moment. She has never been religious, never believed in any power but that of man, but just once she raises her eyes to the ceiling and whispers her thanks. In her hands, she thinks she can feel the alethiometer grow ever so slightly warmer.


End file.
